


Life with Ghost Relatives

by orphan_account



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Family, Gen, Ghosts, Solving Mysteries, Spirits, does this count as an au, she didn't ask for this life, she just wants to do her homework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 22:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14506497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When you can see and talk to ghosts, your life is never boring. Christine can attest to that. -- or: Christine accidentally helps spirits move on, with help from her dead relatives and dead family friends.





	Life with Ghost Relatives

**Author's Note:**

> Tonight on Bones fics nobody asked for: the one where Christine is a medium. I love imagining her adventures with her ghost relatives, and by adventures I mean them giving her unsolicited life advice and crashing her sleepovers by commandeering the ouija board one of her friends inevitably brings over. Also getting entangled in ghost drama while navigating high school drama.
> 
> CW for Max mentioning guns in an honestly pretty canon-typical way.

* * *

 

“Grandpa, I don’t need to be walked to school.” Or floated next to, for that matter and for all the good it does at protecting her from most people, who can’t sense, see, or in any other way perceive ghosts and spirits. “I’m fourteen.”  
  
“You’re not old enough to legally carry a gun,” Max reminds her, “so I’m gonna keep walking you to and from school, kiddo. Or float-walking, like your Uncle Sweets calls it.”  
  
“You can’t carry a gun at all, and oh my god, he couldn’t be more creative?”  
  
Max shrugs. “He tries. Music’s more his thing. And you know, there’s a lot more to this ghost business than just hanging around. You don’t know what I can or can’t do. Not for sure, anyway.”  
  
That may be true, but one thing she _does_ know for sure is that talking to ghosts when other (living) people can see and/or hear you is a recipe for disaster. Bad enough she has to listen to her mom say that ghosts aren’t real and Auntie Angie’s friend Avalon is delusional when she knows for a fact that there are spirits out there. Nope, the last thing Christine needs is for her friends and new classmates to think she's a freak. Walking to school alone every day is her ghost-chat time, and that’s how it’ll stay for a good, long time.  
  
“Maybe you’ll find someone else to talk to this year.” It’s statistically likely in a high school this big. It’s still the first week of classes, so who knows?

“Maybe, but none of them will be my granddaughter.”  
  
Max doesn’t hug her, but it feels like he does. With ghosts, it’s more sight, sound, and sensation than anything else, since they’re noncorporeal. Christine has caught herself thinking more than once about the physics of ghosts, but with no real research to back her up, she ends up with conjecture at best.

Her life is hard.

To his credit, Max doesn’t say anything else once the school comes into view, and when she walks inside, the distinct warmth of affection wraps around her. She glances over her shoulder and smiles as he heads off to do whatever it is he does with his time now. He might be kind of annoying, but she wouldn’t give up their conversations for anything in the world.

 

* * *

 

“Hey.”

The only reason Christine doesn’t jump out of her seat in the library is because she sensed him before he spoke up. Uncle Sweets’s presence is a mixture of childish optimism and the deadpan sarcasm of a person who’s seen it all, and of course there’s the warm, unbridled affection he exudes when he greets her. It’s nice—it’s what she remembers feeling when he came over for dinner or a game before he died—but right now, it’s annoying.

She glances at him, forcing a smile that she puts no effort into making look sincere. Why here? Why now?

“I want to show you something,” he tells her. His tone is the same as just a moment ago, but the warmth recedes. Whatever this is, it’s serious.

“I’m studying,” she whispers at the book in front of her.

“What? No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“ _You_ don’t need to study about the Assyrians when I know for a fact your mom has a few books on them. You need to take lying lessons from your dad, this is disappointing.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Christine hisses. With a quick glance to make sure nobody’s noticed she’s talking to the air next to her (and that could be true, because she has no idea what ghosts are composed of), she turns her head so she can look at her uncle as she speaks. “What is it?”

“Follow me.”

“Where?”

He shoots her a flat look.

It takes all her self-control not to slam the book shut as she gets up to follow him.

 

* * *

 

He leads her to the back of the band practice room, where a kid with a mullet taps a beat out on a desk with his fingers, off in his own world.

Christine looks at her dead uncle, eyebrows arched, stare flat.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sweets says, giving her the same look in return.

She raises her eyebrows higher, so this kid who’s pretend drumming doesn’t snap out of his groove and notice she’s there, let alone there talking with, from his perspective, nothing but air.

“He could use a hand,” says Uncle Sweets. She scrunches up her face as if to ask what he’s talking about, and he sighs. “He’s dead.”

“Wh—” No, she won’t repeat in words what she’s already asked with nonverbal communication. Instead, she whispers, “Go ask Avalon.”

“She’s busy.”

“I’m not a psychic.”

“You kind of are, though. Well, more like a spirit medium, but still—”

“You two mind?”

Christine jumps this time, whirling to face the boy with the mullet.

“I’m kind of in the zone here,” the boy continues. “Or I _was_ , before you got here.”

“Alan,” says Uncle Sweets, “this is who I was telling you about. My niece, Christine.”

“Oh.” Alan stands up, a slight slouch to his shoulders even then. “You can see me.”

“Yeah.” And yet, despite years talking to dead people, Christine shifts her weight to one foot, crosses her arms, and shrugs. “He didn’t tell me what you need help with. I don’t even know if I _can_ help.”

“You can,” says Alan. He smiles, grin wide and relaxed. “Do you know how to write sheet music?”

“Of course she does,” Sweets interjects. “I taught her when she started taking piano lessons. Sure, she gave it up, but she—”

“I use music notation to write in code with my brother.” She shoots him a quick glare. It’s safer to let ghosts talk amongst themselves, but with no one here to overhear the non-supernatural part of this conversation, she’d rather speak for herself.

“Really?” Alan asks.

“Yup.”

“That’s really nerdy.”

Sweets glares at him. “Do you want her to help you or not?”

“Sorry, yeah, I do. See, I wrote this song…”

 

* * *

 

It takes her three days to transcribe Alan’s song, and that mostly because her chances to sit with him and Uncle Sweets are so few, between school work and living her life.

“He set a geometry proof to music, and he had the nerve to call _me_ nerdy?”

“It meant a lot to him,” says Sweets on the walk home. “Enough that he’s been stuck at school for all these years, waiting for the chance to get it in writing.”

And handed in for extra credit, Christine doesn’t add. It’s not necessary. He was there when she turned in the assignment for him years after the fact. He’d seen the teacher tear up when she got it, and heard Alan sniffle and chuckle.

“I dreamt this song the other night,” Christine had told her. “And I did some research. It was a pretty easy mystery to solve, so I thought you might want something like what he wanted to write you.”

Alan is gone now, but the peace and happiness he’d exuded before leaving have stuck with her since.

 

* * *

 

“That was a nice thing you did,” says Max.

Nights at home are full of ghosts, with Christine’s deceased relatives coming by to check in on her and say good night. Her grandfather is always there, and her uncle almost as much, after he’s checked in on the son he never got a chance to hold.

Christine shrugs. “I couldn’t just tell him no after Uncle Sweets volunteered me.”

“Sure you could’ve,” Max insists. “You have your life to deal with. Taking on someone else’s problems is a big gesture, an act of real kindness.”

“You sound like Aldo.”

“That’s why I made a good priest when I pretended to be one.”

“I’m so glad Dad can’t hear you say that,” she tells him, laughing quietly.

“I know, I’m a terrible influence.” Max chuckles, and the room fills with warmth and light. “You make me and your grandmother proud, you know?”

Her grandmother. Her namesake. Whenever Christine asks about her, she’s told her grandmother is busy. With so many demands on her time, Christine can’t investigate on her own. One day, though, she’ll learn more. One day, she’ll meet Christine Brennan.

For now, she has a good life, even if sometimes it’s chaotic.

She settles against her pillows and pulls the sheets up high, her eyes getting heavier by the second.

“Thanks, Grandpa,” she says, smiling as she closes her eyes. “Good night.”


End file.
